Before the advent of the Internet, telephones were dedicated devices, in the sense that they served a defined purpose and were not customizable. With the advent of the Internet, we have witnessed a convergence of personal computing and telecommunications. Computing capabilities (for example, loading and execution of custom Java applets such as games, calendar management, etc.) and Internet browsing features have been added to telecommunication devices (such as fixed and mobile phones). At the same time, communication capabilities (such as IrDA, USB, IEEE 1394, Ethernet, WiFi, CDMA or GSM) have been embedded in laptop computers or personal digital assistants (PDA).
A special category of devices, which we will call “smart phones” in the rest of the document, consists of devices that support at least cellular networking (for example GSM) and Internet browsing, and which cooperate with a smart card (for example a SIM) for controlling access to the cellular network.
A smart phone usually has a smart phone phone book.
A phone book includes a plurality of entries, each entry including at least an identifier (such as a person's name, a service name or the identification of any other communicating third parties). Each phone book entry is usually associated with at least one phone number, usually stored in the phone book.
An entry comprises a displayable part, which is distinguishable on the display of the smart phone and selectively actuated by an interface equipment of the smart phone, which interface equipment is preferably a keypad, a miniature joystick, a rolling mechanism, etc.
The subscriber can, upon selection of a phone book entry, automatically dial one of the phone numbers associated with the phone book entry, or send an SMS to this phone number.
The smart card usually has a smart card phone book, which is similar to the smart phone phone book but is stored in the smart card instead of the smart phone. In this document, “regular phone book” will refer to the smart card phone book and smart phone phone book taken together. Those two phone books' entries can be complementary, or might overlap in whole or in part. In other words, certain entries of the regular phone book can be stored in the smart card, others in the smart phone, and some may be stored in both.
The smart phone contains a piece of proprietary software enabling navigation through the regular phone book. Consequently, the regular phone book is normally displayed according to proprietary methods defined by each smart phone manufacturer.
The smart phone can also browse the Internet using an industry standard protocol called WAP (Wireless Application Protocol). The smart phone can thus browse yellow pages web sites in order to seek a person, and locate the desired phone number inside a web page of the yellow page web site. Such phone numbers are usually associated with a hyperlink (or with another area or section of the page, such as hot spots), and this hyperlink can usually be clicked in order to call the number automatically (thanks to a special WAP tag inside the hyperlink).
Smart cards may also have known features enabling them to request a specific command, such as a phone call, to be executed by the smart phone. For example, for a SIM card, this can be done through the standard SIM Toolkit API, which specifies a series of proactive commands.
Proactive commands will be hereafter considered as commands sent by the smart card to the smart phone. Such commands are called proactive due to the fact that they reverse the usual situation in which the smart phone is a master device and the smart card is a slave device. While normal commands are sent from the smart phone to the smart card, proactive commands are sent in the opposite direction (from smart card to smart phone). SIM Toolkit is the preferred mechanism for implementing such proactive commands.
The smart card may also support TCP/IP and HTTP protocols, and be able to host a web server, as known from state-of-the-art (e.g. BULL CP8 I-Simplify product). This enables storage of web pages inside the card and access to those pages through Internet protocols (the smart phone can browse the web pages stored in the smart card).
The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) has specified (notably in OMA SyncML Common v 1.2 and in OMA Data Synchronization Enabler Release, version 1.2) synchronization methods, which achieve the following goals (citation from page 8 of OMA-ERELD-SyncML-DS-V 1—2-20040601-C):
“The goal of a common synchronization protocol is symmetric. It would connect any to any, over any network That is, it would: *Synchronize networked data with any mobile device *Synchronize a mobile device with any networked data The data synchronization protocol would synchronize networked data with many different devices, including handheld computers, mobile phones, automotive computers, and desktop PCs. A user could access and manipulate the same set of data from different devices. For example, a user could read e-mail from either a handheld or a mobile phone, and still maintain a consistent, updated record of which messages had been read. Similarly, with any-to-any synchronization, mobile devices could support more types of data, including e-mail, calendar, contact management information, enterprise data stored in databases, and documents on the web.”
Smart cards are not part of the mobile devices explicitly listed in this standard.
Another relevant technology known from state of the art consists of industry standard servlets. Servlets are described by SUN Microsystems as follows (http://java.sun.com/products/serylet/).
“Java Servlet technology provides Web developers with a simple, consistent mechanism or extending the functionality of a Web server and for accessing existing business systems. A servlet can almost be thought of as an applet that runs on the server side—without a face. Java servlets make many Web applications possible.”
One limitation of state-of-the-art smart phones lies in the fact that while a phone call initiated through WAP is done in a standard manner (the web page and the web page navigation are independent of the type of smart phone), it is the smart phone manufacturer who defines the way a phone number is searched in the regular phone book and the way this number is called when the call is initiated from the regular phone book. Consequently, the subscribers of a cellular network operator will have different ways of making regular phone book initiated phone calls depending on the smart phone they own, and they will have to learn a different way to make a regular phone book initiated phone call each time they switch to a different smart phone. In addition, subscribers are bound by the built in features of the regular phone book browser (provided in the smart phone), usually without freedom to customize this regular phone book according to their taste.
Cellular network operators would therefore prefer to have a unified method, both for ease of use and marketing reasons (the operator prefers to own the customer relationship—not to leave it to the smart phone manufacturer). Indeed, a unified method would decrease the visibility of smart phone manufacturers by rendering them equivalent with respect to the regular phone book initiated phone call making process, while it could still increase the visibility of the operator (for example through particular default fonts or colors, which, optionally, could be freely changed by the subscriber if he wishes so).
Another limitation of state-of-the-art smart phones is the fact that cellular networking features and personal computing features remain in separate units despite the technology convergence mentioned above. The personal computing unit does not invoke the telecommunication unit automatically, except in rare instances such as web pages with specially crafted WAP tags permitting automatic dialing of a selected number, as discussed earlier (yellow pages).